| Dude Watchin' With The Brontës |
[Jul. 10th, 2009|11:13 pm] |
Kate Beaton, for those who don't know her: http://beatonna.livejournal.com/109102.html
(Yes, that Shelley icon of mine is by her as well. Ah, and a few weeks ago she did Zelda and Scott F. Fitzgerald. And before that a story about a mermaid. And long ago a wonderful Elizabeth I, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, twice James Joyce, Lewis Carroll, and most famously Tesla, and hilarious dialogues with her younger self.) |
|
|
| Cat People (1942) |
[Jul. 9th, 2009|12:27 am] |
- Oh, you can tell Alice anything. She's such a good egg. She can understand anything. - There are some things a woman does not want other women to understand.
(Oliver explains to his wife why he discusses their troubles with his work spouse...) |
|
|
| Today I browsed petrusplancius' archive |
[Jul. 5th, 2009|01:56 am] |
...I can recommend doing so.

Giovanni Segantini: My Models, 1888 (petrusplancius, 7 January 2009) Ivan Kramskoi: A self-portrait of the painter at work, 1884 (petrusplancius, 15 April 2009) |
|
|
| The Lady and The Goldfish II |
[Jul. 4th, 2009|03:06 pm] |
"He's such a gold-fish, Rara . . . any fingers that will throw him bread. ..." (Ronald Firbank, The Flower Beneath the Foot)
Maybe it's Geisha and Harem rather than Hortus Conclusus overtones that make the goldfish bowl inappropriate as an attribute for the Blessed Virgin Mary. See Matisse, Klimt, Max Kurzweil:

Finally, the obvious Goldfish = Geisha equation was made e.g. in the song "The Amorous Goldfish" from Sidney Jones' musical comedy "The Geisha", 1896: http://leopold-paula-b.livejournal.com/419882.html.
Von der Sirenen Listigkeit Tun die Poeten dichten. (James Joyce, Ulysses)
Moreover, a Madonna of the Goldfish painting might trigger notions of Mermaids (desinat in piscem mulier formosa superne) and Sirens, at their best playful and ambiguous,...

...at their worst deadly and demoniac, and close to Harpies, Vampires and Lilith. (Half-fish, half-bird and half-snake women seem to be in some way interchangeable or at least related, but malkhos is the expert on this topic. I'm just guessing.) All of this is of course totally impossible here. But appropriate or not, I'd still love to see one.
On a slightly different note: In this 17th century still life by Willem Kalf there's Jonah emerging from the Whale, next to a Ming Bowl with the Eight Immortals. A Goldfish Smoothie in the glass behind? I hope not!:
 |
|
|
| Happy Holidays II: Icecream |
[Jul. 3rd, 2009|08:57 pm] |

(from: The Supersizers Go Regency)
I think it was jermynsavile who said that he actually tasted this flavour. Anyone else? |
|
|
| Cuts |
[Jun. 21st, 2009|11:50 pm] |
By the way, this is "drama-free zone". So feel free to friend, de-friend or re-friend me anytime. I know that tastes and interests change. I don't take things like that personally.
I've added that to my profile today. Then I made a lot of cuts on my f-list. I hope you don't take it personally either. It's not as if any of you had offended me or whatever, I just don't read your journals anymore and I don't want to drag along too many "nominal members", that's all.
For once I turned off the comment feature, because I don't want a public discussion. But of course you can send me a message. |
|
|
| Hendrick van Steenwick the Younger |
[Jun. 21st, 2009|03:30 pm] |

Apart from the overwhelming setting and the parrot, I'm particularly fond of the semitransparent people (Croesus and Solon). - Steenwick also did a St Jerome:
 |
|
|
| asaroton: unswept |
[Jun. 20th, 2009|06:29 pm] |
ten lapides varios lutulenta radere palma What? sweep with dirty broom a floor inlaid - Horace, Satires 2. 4. 83.

asaroton: genre of mosaic, depicting left over food scraps in a trompe l'oeil manner.

celeberrimus fuit in hoc genere Sosus, qui Pergami stravit quem vocant asaroton oecon, quoniam purgamenta cenae in pavimentis quaeque everri solent velut relicta fecerat parvis e tessellis tinctisque in varios colores.
The most famous in that genre was Sosos who laid at Pergamon what is called the asarotos oikos or unswept room, because on the pavement were represented the débris of a meal, and those things which are normally swept away, as if they had been left there, made of small tesserae of many colours. - Pliny, Natural History 36.184.

|
|
|
| O felix culpa: Seven Sins and the Virtues |
[Jun. 18th, 2009|07:54 pm] |
As fruits ungrateful to the planter's care On savage stocks inserted learn to bear; The surest Virtues thus from Passions shoot, Wild Nature's vigor working at the root. What crops of wit and honesty appear From spleen, from obstinacy, hate, or fear! See anger, zeal and fortitude supply; Ev'n av'rice, prudence; sloth, philosophy; Lust, thro' some certain strainers well refin'd, Is gentle love, and charms all womankind: Envy, to which th' ignoble mind's a slave, Is emulation in the learn'd or brave: Nor Virtue, male or female, can we name, But what will grow on Pride, or grow on Shame.
Alexander Pope: An Essay on Man, Second Epistle, 181 ff.
Two observations: 1.) Only Gluttony is omitted of the Seven. Pope could have said that it's a possible root of good humour? Nevermind. 2.) Pride is given it's due place as the Arch-Vice, the one that led to the Fall ("eritis sicut deus"). And she's coupled with Shame that first appeared at the other side of the Tree ("quis enim indicavit tibi quod nudus esses").
I need to read much more Pope, maybe starting with "An Essay on Criticism", "An Essay on Man" and "Four Moral Essays". (So far I've only read the "Dunciad" and bits and pieces.) He certainly has got a way with words and he seems to love Horace nearly as much as I do. (The Essays I want to read all seem indebted to Horace's Epistles.)
So far today I've read a couple of pages from Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, the New Testament, Ovid's Ars amatoria and Epistulae ex Ponto, Petrarca's Canzoniere, Yeats's A Vision, Pope's Essay on Man. No Horace or Joyce so far, but the evening is young and I'm caffeinated to the eyeballs. Black tea, no coffee. I also watched a lot of youtube. That's short attention span for you. Do you know that, too? Very enjoyable.
Tomorrow there's a school outing to the Zoological Garden of Schönbrunn, also very enjoyable, and directly from there I'll go to the public library to research this: http://community.livejournal.com/classics/366132.html |
|
|
| Thanks for the recommendation, anicca_anicca |
[Jun. 18th, 2009|06:41 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | in love with Sue Perkins | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Alfred Deller | ] | I think this will for different reasons appeal to different people on my f-list. (So you all should have a look.)
I was particularly moved by the Elizabethans' coffeeandtealessness. - Yesterday I watched "Regency" which sadly is out of sync. Or it's my computer pulling tricks on me again.
...Oh, and I've got the suspicion that the above word order (and / or maybe something else?) is odd. I'm still very appreciative of corrective feedback! |
|
|
| Happy Bloomsday! |
[Jun. 16th, 2009|12:25 pm] |
(For the uninitiated: "Love's Old Sweet Song" is something like the theme song of "Ulysses".)
Oncε in thε dεar dεad days bεyond rεcall Whεn on thε world thε mists bεgan to fall Out of thε drεams that rosε in happy throng Lo, to our hεarts lovε sang an old swεεt song And in thε dusk whεrε fεll thε firεlight glεam Softly it wovε itsεlf into our drεam
Just a song at twilight, whεn thε lights arε low And thε flick'ring shadows softly comε and go Though thε hεart bε wεary sad thε day and long Still to us at twilight comεs lovε's old song Comεs lovε's old swεεt song
|
|
|
| Good Old Flausenthurm |
[Jun. 12th, 2009|08:29 am] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | Biedermeier | ] |
Yes, Mr Lubitsch. That's exactly what Vienna is like. Well, at least the Vienna of Schnitzler's cute girlies. (Cf. Stroheim's "Wedding March" and Ophüls' "Liebelei".) Glad to see Lubitsch is a director not only of doors, but also of staircases. ;-) The movie is based on Oscar Straus' 1907 operetta "Ein Walzertraum". The main parts are played and sung with gusto by Maurice Chevalier, Claudette Colbert (*points at new user pic*) and Miriam Hopkins.
Small note: We don't call these places "Biergarten" here, it's "Schanigarten": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schanigarten or "Heuriger": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heuriger, and beer is not quite that prevalent. You'll also see a lot of wine and spritzers, of course coffee and even raspberry soda ("Himbeerkracherl").
Off to have breakfast with Lisi. |
|
|
| Die Genußmittel: Der Kaffee - Der Tee |
[Jun. 12th, 2009|06:42 am] |
Von den vier Hauptvertretern der Genußmittel Kaffee, Tee, Tabak und Alkohol bilden die ersten beiden ein Bruderpaar, ( German )
One highlight for English readers: Bodhidharma is said to have fallen asleep seven years into his nine years of wall-gazing. Becoming angry with himself, he cut off his eyelids to prevent it from happening again. According to the legend, as his eyelids hit the floor the first tea plants sprang up; and thereafter tea would provide a stimulant to help keep students of Chán awake during meditation.
As you might or might not know, I completely gave up caffeine last summer, after having given up alcohol before. I'm still a teetotaller and intend to stay one, but during the last few weeks I gave up my caffeine abstinence. I'm not drinking coffee or coke, but quite a lot of tea. So far I don't regret it. |
|
|
| Duplizitätsgören, Taking A Tea Break |
[Jun. 11th, 2009|09:54 am] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Billie Holiday, Beatles, Monteverdi, Bird Songs on CD | ] |
 Brigitte Helm (Maria / Maria) ("Metropolis", 1927)
 Fredric March (Dr Jekyll / Mr Hyde), Rouben Mamoulian (director), Miriam Hopkins (Ivy) ("Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde", 1931)
Ernest Thesiger (Doctor Pretorius), Colin Clive (Baron Henry Frankenstein), Boris Karloff (the Monster), Elsa Lanchester (Mary Shelley Wollstonecraft / the Monster's mate) ("Bride of Frankenstein", 1935)

|
|
|
| (no subject) |
[Jun. 10th, 2009|02:55 pm] |
cum bene sit clausae cavea Pandione natae, nititur in silvas illa redire suas.
Although Pandion's caged daughter is well, she struggles to get back to her woods.
(Ovid, Epistulae ex Ponto 1. 3. 39 f.)
[Pandion's daughter = the nightingale]
Kitsch? Maybe (and Ovid knows: confiteor misero molle cor esse mihi, same poem, v. 32), but I still like it.
|
|
|
| (no subject) |
[Jun. 4th, 2009|07:08 pm] |
Today I read the first few pages of the second Book of the "Nicomachean Ethics". I like Aristotle's insistence on the power of habits and practice for the "moral virtues". And also the way he shows the limits thereof:
"For instance, it is the nature of a stone to move downwards, and it cannot be trained to move upwards, even though you should try to train it to do so by throwing it up into the air ten thousand times." |
|
|
| A Joycean Look At Odyssey XIX, Subliminally Woolly |
[Jun. 4th, 2009|12:10 am] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Joseph Haydn: Die Jahreszeiten | ] | The following is part of Fritz Senn's essay Remodelling Homer.
produce your credentials (Ulysses 16.1342)
All signals have to be treated with caution, and we cannot tell what is or is not a signal, sign or sema. Odysseus, on his return, has to disguise himself and fake names and origins in order to find out whom he can trust. It takes skill to hide one's identity, but it is also difficult to prove it. Names are particularly unreliable, for anyone can make up a story. One's looks change with age, naturally or by divine interference. Some bodily marks, however, remain as tokens of recognition, like the scar the nurse Eurykleia discovers in one of the most memorable scenes. The scar does what a name cannot do. ( Read more... )
Caveat: 'A lay reader conditioned by Joyce, deformed by Finnegans Wake, will naturally project features that historical philologists may disprove.' (From the same essay.)
The typos, however, are mine. If you find some, please tell me. I'll be glad to correct them.
|
|
|
| Facetious Fazzoletti |
[Jun. 2nd, 2009|12:20 pm] |
Horace, Satires 1. 4. 7 f calls Lucilius "facetus, emunctae naris": "a witty man, his nose wiped". (Most translations lose the nose. John Conington has it as "a shrewd keen satirist", Bernhard Kytzler: "witzig geschliffen, ausgeräumten Verstandes".)
Holding up on Show By Its Corner a Dirty Crumpled Handkerchief
He came over to the gunrest and, thrusting a hand into Stephen's upper pocket, said: --Lend us a loan of your noserag to wipe my razor. Stephen suffered him to pull out and hold up on show by its corner a dirty crumpled handkerchief. Buck Mulligan wiped the razorblade neatly. Then, gazing over the handkerchief, he said: --The bard's noserag! A new art colour for our Irish poets: snotgreen. You can almost taste it, can't you? (Ulysses, Chapter 1: Telemachus)
On the Emunctory Field
--After you with the push, Joe, says he, taking out his handkerchief to swab himself dry. [...] The muchtreasured and intricately embroidered ancient Irish facecloth attributed to Solomon of Droma and Manus Tomaltach og MacDonogh, authors of the Book of Ballymote, was then carefully produced and called forth prolonged admiration. No need to dwell on the legendary beauty of the cornerpieces, the acme of art, wherein one can distinctly discern each of the four evangelists in turn presenting to each of the four masters his evangelical symbol, a bogoak sceptre, a North American puma (a far nobler king of beasts than the British article, be it said in passing), a Kerry calf and a golden eagle from Carrantuohill. The scenes depicted on the emunctory field, showing our ancient duns and raths and cromlechs and grianauns and seats of learning and maledictive stones, are as wonderfully beautiful and the pigments as delicate as when the Sligo illuminators gave free rein to their artistic fantasy long long ago in the time of the Barmecides. Glendalough, the lovely lakes of Killarney, the ruins of Clonmacnois, Cong Abbey, Glen Inagh and the Twelve Pins, Ireland's Eye, the Green Hills of Tallaght, Croagh Patrick, the brewery of Messrs Arthur Guinness, Son and Company (Limited), Lough Neagh's banks, the vale of Ovoca, Isolde's tower, the Mapas obelisk, Sir Patrick Dun's hospital, Cape Clear, the glen of Aherlow, Lynch's castle, the Scotch house, Rathdown Union Workhouse at Loughlinstown, Tullamore jail, Castleconnel rapids, Kilballymacshonakill, the cross at Monasterboice, Jury's Hotel, S. Patrick's Purgatory, the Salmon Leap, Maynooth college refectory, Curley's hole, the three birthplaces of the first duke of Wellington, the rock of Cashel, the bog of Allen, the Henry Street Warehouse, Fingal's Cave--all these moving scenes are still there for us today rendered more beautiful still by the waters of sorrow which have passed over them and by the rich incrustations of time. (Ulysses, Chapter 12: Cyclops)
The "rich incrustations of time" indeed! (Recently I learnt that Paul Gauguin called Gustave Moreau's art "jewelled snot".) |
|
|
| Natural Nests in the Cases of Stuffed Birds |
[May. 31st, 2009|03:17 pm] |
As Mary Bell left my letters unanswered I concluded that she meant me to drop out of her life. I read of our child's birth, heard nothing more for five years. I accepted a post in the Dublin Museum, specialised in the subject of the Irish migratory birds, and at four o'clock one afternoon an attendant brought her into my office. I was greatly moved, but she spoke to me as if to a stranger. I was "Mr. Bond", she was "sorry to intrude upon my time" but I was "the only person in Ireland who could give her a certain information". I took the hint and became the courteous Curator, I was there "to help the student". She wished to study the nests of certain migratory birds, though the only exact method was to make their nests with her own hands. She had found and copied nests in her own neighbourhood, but as progress, entirely dependent on personal observation, was slow, wanted to know what had been published on the subject. Every species preferred some special materials, twigs, lichens, grasses, mosses, bunches of hair and so on, and had a special architecture. I told her what I knew, sent her books, proceedings of learned societies, and passages translated from foreign tongues. Some months later she brought me swift's, swallow's, corncrake's, and reed-warbler's nests made by her own hands and so well that, when I compared them with the natural nests in the cases of stuffed birds, I could see no difference. Her manner had changed; it was embarrassed, almost mysterious, as though she were keeping something back. She wanted to make a nest for a bird of a certain size and shape. She could not or would not name its species but named its genus. She wanted information about the nesting habits of that genus, borrowed a couple of books, and saying that she had a train to catch, went away.
Any chance that "Irish migratory birds" is an allusion to the term "Wild Geese" = Irish expats? This way or the other, this W.B. Yeats promises to be more fun than I expected.

(Yes, it's a cuckoo's nest she's building...)
|
|
|
| "The Woman He Scorned" (1929) |
[May. 25th, 2009|09:32 pm] |
A Tempest. A little boat about to wreck. The sailor sends a prayer to God: "Save me, Lord! And I will save that unfortunate girl!"
Cut. The sailor and the girl in marriage garb. They look unhappy and don't move. The camera pans and shows the guests, equally frozen like wax figures. Zoom out to reveal the wedding photographer. He gives a sign with his hand and people start moving again.
( spoilers )
Youtube has got it:
Of course it's just an odd coincidence that Filmmuseum showed this movie today, while you are honeymooning, Dagmar. I couldn't wait to write my review, but of course I didn't have you two in mind, and I hope you have other things than film criticism in mind as well, right? ;-) |
|
|
| fagus and φηγός: false φριενδς |
[May. 24th, 2009|05:56 pm] |
fagus: beech φηγός: oak
Virgil uses the fagus as a piece of bucolic scenery in Eclogues 1, 2, 3, 5, and 9; [...] Apart from Virgil's use of the tree in Eclogues (and a couple of brief allusions in Georgics), the word is used very infrequently in Latin. [...] The popularity of the tree, therefore, seems to have originated with Virgil in his Eclogues.
Why should he have chosen this tree? Theocritus has a notable simile of the lover longing for his loved one (Idyll 12. 8 f.): σκιερὴν δ΄ὑπὸ φηγὸν/ ἠελίου φρύγοντος ὁδοιπόρος ἔδραμον ὥς τις - 'I hastened to you as a wayfarer to a shady oak-tree out of the scorching sun.' This simile relies on the shade of the φηγός for its effect. Now it seems that the φηγός was a type of oak-tree, and, though it is the same word as Latin fagus, it was not used of the same tree. Theocritus only mentions it once elsewhere (9. 20), but it seems a plausible explanation for Virgil's choice of the fagus that he was taken with this simile of Theocritus, wrongly identified the φηγός with fagus, and used it in his bucolic scenery (at first emphasizing, like Theocritus, the idea of shade, but then extending its use as a characteristic detail of pastoral poetry).
Gordon Williams: Tradition and Originality in Roman Poetry, 1968, p. 318. - He then goes on to show how also Catullus before (64. 289) and Propertius afterwards (1. 18. 20) seem to have confused fagus and φηγός. |
|
|
| Nice day to get married |
[May. 23rd, 2009|07:39 am] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | exsultate jubilate | ] |
Hugs and kisses to Dagmar and Dan! *does a little happy dance*
|
|
|
| Exile and τλημοσύνη |
[May. 22nd, 2009|11:24 am] |
Ovid, Tristia 5 . 11 . 7: perfer et obdura; multo graviora tulisti Odyssey 20 . 18: τέτλαθι δὴ κραδίη· καὶ κύντερον ἄλλο ποτ' ἔτλης
[Carry on and endure; you bore much heavier things Endure, my heart; once you also bore something worse]
Is Ovid comparing his exile to Odysseus' afflictions? Both go on to remember a woeful instance in the following verse: Ovid, the day he was separated from his wife, Odysseus, when the Cyclops ate some of his fellows.
Horace makes Odysseus say in his satire 2 . 5 . 20 f: fortem hoc animum tolerare iubebo;/ et quondam maiora tuli. [I will command my strong mind to endure this; once I bore also bigger things] I'm sure that he is alluding to that verse in Homer. After all it's even the same person here.
(And yes, perfer et obdura is a famous quote from Catullus 8 . 11: sed obstinata mente perfer, obdura, and from Ovid's own Amores 3 . 11 . 7 f: perfer et obdura: dolor hic tibi proderit olim:/ saepe tulit lassis sucus amarus opem.)
|
|
|
| Bad Verse (*nudge nudge*) |
[May. 18th, 2009|10:03 pm] |
Music herself is lost, in vain she brings Her choicest notes to praise the best of kings: Her melting strains in you a tomb have found, And lie like bees in their own sweetness drown'd.
(John Dryden: To His Sacred Majesty, v. 53-56)
PS, Bad Translation: As heightened spirits fall in richer dew. so wie konzentrierter Alkohol in reicheren Tropfen herabfällt. (Elmar Lehmann's prose translation for a bilingual anthology) |
|
|
| a leash of languages at once |
[May. 18th, 2009|06:43 pm] |
|
te vidit insons Cerberus aureo cornu decorum leniter atterens caudam et recedentis trilingui ore pedes tetigitque crura.
(Cerberus saw you in all your beauty with your golden horn and did you no harm, but gently brushed his tail against you and licked your departing feet and legs with his three-tongued mouth. Horaces, Odes 2 . 19 . 29-32. - "Cerberus had usually three heads, and therefore three mouths, three tongues, and three barks." Nisbet & Hubbard.)
( trilingui ore ) trilingui?
'Twas English cut on Greek and Latin, Like fustian heretofore on satin. It had an odd promiscuous tone, As if h' had talk'd three parts in one. Which made some think, when he did gabble, Th' had heard three labourers of Babel; Or Cerberus himself pronounce A leash* of languages at once.
(Samuel Butler: Hudibras. The First Part, 1663, Canto I. 97-104) __ *leash: a set of three (originally in sporting language)
|
|
|
| Conrad Gesner: Thierbuch,... |
[May. 12th, 2009|12:56 am] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | MUST GO TO SLEEP | ] | ...das ist, ausführiche Beschreibung und lebendige ja auch eigentliche Contrafactur und Abmahlung aller Vierfüßigen Thieren, so aus der Erden und in Wassern wohnen.
Thank you, filialucis, for turning my attention to this link: http://www.humi.keio.ac.jp/treasures/nature/Gesner-web/contents_b.html
I'm sure I'm going to point out some of my favourite pictures in the future, and here's a funny one to start with: Anas quadrupes, ein vierfüssige Ent.

I also got my Nicomachean Ethics today and was happy to see that I understood the Greek better than I thought. (And better than the German translation by Franz Dirlmeier.)
...My days are packed, I wish they were longer. |
|
|
| "The Queen of Spades" (1949) |
[May. 11th, 2009|11:56 pm] |
|
I never read Pushkin's story, but I knew the plot from Tchaikovsky's opera. So I was prepared to see the tragedy of a man mad with ambition. Not particularly interested in that topic, I was all the more free to appreciate the set design, costumes, cinematography and above all Edith Evan's and Anton Walbrook's acting. Wow: big drama! Very impressive and fun to watch. All through the movie I suspected them to immensely enjoy themselves in these flawed characters.

When I left the cinema, it was dark night and raining. On my way from the Albertina, where the Filmmuseum is seated, to the Volkstheater, where my tramway starts, I passed the Palais Pallavicini and heard through the open windows a band playing a somewhat Viennese waltz version of "Ain't She Sweet", which amused me. ("I guess you'd have to be there", as the saying goes.)
 |
|
|
| Fish-tails |
[May. 9th, 2009|03:03 pm] |
holding dear H. J. (Mr. James, Henry) literally by the button-hole... in those so consecrated surroundings (a garden in the Temple, no less) and saying, for once, the right thing namely: "Cher maître " to his checqued waistcoat, the Princess Bariatinsky, as the fish-tails said to Odysseus, ἐνὶ Τροίῃ
(Ezra Pound, Canto LXXIX)
Cher maître: Dear Master. For Hugh Kenner that's equivalent to how the Sirens greet Odysseus: πολύαιν' Ὀδυσεῦ, Odyssey XII. 184. ἐνὶ Τροίῃ, is a quote from the same speech/song Odyssey XII. 189 (Kindly note that EP - however erroneously - calls the Sirens "fish-tails", malkhos!) Princess Bariatinsky is Lydia Yavorska, 1874-1921, a Russian-born actress (and erstwhile wife of Prince Vladimir Bariatinsky) who acted in London, 1910-1921:

|
|
|
| navigation |
| [ |
viewing |
| |
most recent entries |
] |
| [ |
go |
| |
earlier |
] |
| |
|
|